Hi allIn Australia, its Mother's Day today.Whether or not you believe days like Mothers Day and Fathers Day are just concocted by card manufacturers to sell more product, I think it provides us with a great opportunity to think of the great good work of our grandmothers, mothers, wives, sisters and daughters and our friends. My own teacher says that our debt of gratitude towards our parents can never be repaid unless we have the opportunity to introduce them to the Dhamma.Yet, for many of us, we live in societies where the most important job in the world, motherhood, is unrecognized and unappreciated.Please join me in extending metta to all those who have brought us and all those whom we love into the world.May all our mothers, wives, sisters and daughters be happy, be free from misery.May they all share in our merits.Metta

Ben

“No lists of things to be done. The day providential to itself. The hour. There is no later. This is later. All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.” - Cormac McCarthy, The Road

Learn this from the waters:in mountain clefts and chasms,loud gush the streamlets,but great rivers flow silently.- Sutta Nipata 3.725

Hey, quick question. Is there a sutta somewhere that contains the notion that every living being has been our mother? If so, can someone post it here?

The claim that (it is certain) all beings have once been our mothers is just Tibetan hyperbole. The Buddha's teaching is: satto sulabharūpo yo namūtābhūtapubbo iminā dīghena addhunā — "It is not easy to find a being who in this long course has not formerly been one's mother." (Mātusutta, SN. ii. 189; Connected Discourses I. 659). In subsequent suttas the same is said also of fathers, brothers, sisters, sons and daughters.

But let's not forget the application of this teaching. In contrast with some Tibetan presentations, the Buddha is not encouraging us to go all maudlin at the thought that so-&-so was once our mum (or become vegetarians to avoid the risk of devouring our former daughters etc.), but rather:

"For what reason? Because, bhikkhus, this saṃsāra is without discoverable beginning. A first point is not discerned of beings roaming and wandering on, hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving. For such a long time, bhikkhus, you have experienced suffering, anguish, and disaster, and swelled the cemeteries. It is enough to experience revulsion towards all formations, enough to become dispassionate towards them, enough to be liberated from them."

This is the message below from my son and daughter - which will go into the Keepsakes box along with the note my son scribbled when we thought he was dying with a square plastic bread wrapper "tie" lodged in his windpipe and couldn't speak - the ambulance failed to arrive so I drove him to the local emergency hospital, his earlier note when he ran away from home in high school (saying it had nothing to do with me, just school problems) and another when he got out of Syria after not being heard of for some weeks when backpacking through India and Middle-East ~ and memories of my daughter cutting all the kids hair in her playgroup when we mothers were inside having a cup of tea, being selected for the State basketball team in her teens, and fending off the telephone calls from the local lads when she 'bloomed' during those years :

"We love you Mum ~ when we think back over the years and remember all the special things you've done for us, we realise that you're not only a wonderful Mum you're also a unique woman. You've taught us so much about life and live and giving, and those are lessons we'll never forget. You've shown us how to stand on our own in the world, and for that we'll always be grateful. So many things that have added to our happiness have been gifts from you. Maybe having a Mum like you have spoiled us a bit but don't ever think we don't appreciate and love you, because we do.... with all our heart. Thanks for being a wonderful Mum whom we admire and love. Luke and Sarah."

Still surviving as a mother of these two wonderful young adults.

And this sutta is a favourite. It helped me deal with my own mother through times of irritation or when we had opposing views on matters of how I live my life. .... thinking of a hundred years of defecation and urination on my shoulder certainly put things in perspective My gratitude to her is unbounded knowing the sacrifices she made for my two brothers and I.

Kataññu Suttas - Gratitude

"Monks, I will teach you the level of a person of no integrity and the level of a person of integrity. Listen & pay close attention. I will speak.""As you say, lord," the monks responded.The Blessed One said: "Now what is the level of a person of no integrity? A person of no integrity is ungrateful, doesn't acknowledge the help given to him. This ingratitude, this lack of acknowledgment is second nature among rude people. It is entirely on the level of a person of no integrity."A person of integrity is grateful & acknowledges the help given to him. This gratitude, this acknowledgment is second nature among fine people. It is entirely on the level of a person of integrity.{II,iv,2} "I tell you, monks, there are two people who are not easy to repay. Which two? Your mother & father. Even if you were to carry your mother on one shoulder & your father on the other shoulder for 100 years, and were to look after them by anointing, massaging, bathing, & rubbing their limbs, and they were to defecate & urinate right there [on your shoulders], you would not in that way pay or repay your parents. If you were to establish your mother & father in absolute sovereignty over this great earth, abounding in the seven treasures, you would not in that way pay or repay your parents. Why is that? Mother & father do much for their children. They care for them, they nourish them, they introduce them to this world. But anyone who rouses his unbelieving mother & father, settles & establishes them in conviction; rouses his unvirtuous mother & father, settles & establishes them in virtue; rouses his stingy mother & father, settles & establishes them in generosity; rouses his foolish mother & father, settles & establishes them in discernment: To this extent one pays & repays one's mother & father."http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka ... an.html#32

mettaChris

---The trouble is that you think you have time------Worry is the Interest, paid in advance, on a debt you may never owe------It's not what happens to you in life that is important ~ it's what you do with it ---